God's Beauty

Yesterday, I looked at the world upside down. I tipped my head in the ocean and the seaglass churning became my sky, the creamy sand became my clouds, and long, tall stalks of palm trees stretching into the bluest sky became upside-down plants in an airy expanse. I focused on different parts of the picture: the contrast between the green palms and the blue sky--both colors so brilliant, so bright--or the white clouds billowing in the blue--growing and moving light as a feather yet strong and commanding--or the shift of light blue to dark blue in the sky--almost like I could see the dark blue of the galaxy just behind the thin veil of sky--or I'd focus on the undulating clear turquoise carrying me softly on wave wings. The salty ocean breeze played on my heartstings a melody of beauty.

As I soaked up rays of sun, I soaked the idea that God created that. God has the ingenuity and power to create that scene, that moment. His creation is so different from what I am doing right now. My words spin pretty pictures of beauty but they are only the vaguest shadow of what it was, coming from a memory. However, without any mold or example, God's Word created that beauty from nothing into substance.

This summer, I have been pondering beauty. Beauty plays melodies and harmonies on our hearts, and somewhere deep inside we all know that Beauty is...something...something we can't really describe although philosophers through centuries have tried. We know it though because we were created by the one who created Beauty, who IS infinite Beauty. Moreover, we are told to think on what is beautiful (Phil 4:8) Yet, how do we do this when no one really knows what it is, when beauty is but an ethereal substance floating through air playing music on hearts (my personal definition)?

So like everything, we should turn to the Creator of Beauty--to God who is Beautiful--to know. Since I am no Biblical scholar, I utilized my concordance to start on my adventure of what God says Beauty is and I looked up "beautiful." I knew most of the references, but one stuck out: Ecclesiastes 3:11. I began reading from the beginning of the chapter:

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace...I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything BEAUTIFUL in its time" (Eccl 3:1-8, 10-11a)

It is funny that when I think of beauty my first thought is nature. Ecclesiastes, though, describes a human life. But life...it is too messed up (a time to kill), too mundane (a time to sew), too broken (a time to weep), too full of suffering (a time to lose), to be...beautiful. Yet, that is what God's Word says.

And that is what the Word of God demonstrates. Think, the most beautiful action in this world, is something which is viscerally ugly--Christ's death on the cross. Think of the blood and sweat, the wracked breath, the nailed hands and feet, the head hung, the human body which God made good and beautiful marred, disfigured. And think, how repulsive the idea of the Son of God dying is; it should make us shake--it made nature. But that moment of sacrifice is beautiful.

That moment so unlike my ocean moment contradicts all our ideas of beauty. God is the "King of Contradictions" as a Matthew West song puts it, putting things together that which seemingly contradict in our feeble minds. The one, true God's ways are not our ways; He is Holy and His Beauty far exceeds our imaginations.

His Beauty is found in nature's breath, in a field of flowers, in a grandmother's kiss, in a skilled painting, in Mozart's compositions, in a dancer's movements, and we find it, enjoy it and marvel at it.

His Beauty is also found in a human life lived for Him, in that life's suffering and in its brokenness; for we see but a snapshot, a puzzle piece, of the whole story, but we can rest assured that the story is a beautiful one for it ends at His feet in Glory.